MATMOS – The Marriage of True Minds

Album:
The Marriage of True Minds

Artist: Matmos

Label: Thrill Jockey

The Ganzfeld experiment is one of the most fascinating styles in the history of para-psychology, where sensory depravation is utilized to test individuals for ESP by covering their eyes, masking their ears in white noise for 30 minutes and are then asked to describe a message the sender is attempting to transmit to them upon his or her observance of randomly chosen images, be it a cat, a loaf of bread or a pencil.

For their latest full-length, acclaimed electronic duo Matmos take this concept into the realm of musical creation, using the transcripts from the subjects co-founder Drew Daniel employed both at his Baltimore home and Oxford University to craft the crux of the nine-song The Marriage of True Minds, the pair’s label debut on Chicago indie Thrill Jockey.

The final outcome is the most intriguing and innovative Matmos LP since A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure, a swirling menagerie of hard rock riffs, rubber band basslines, old school techno rolls, Eastern strings, Latino rhythms, African grooves, dour synths, processed bagpipes and samples of a Chinese Checkers game that not only celebrate the twenty-year relationship between Daniel and longtime partner M.C. Schmidt in art but in love as well. And you don’t need a sixth sense to recognize their place at the vanguard of modern composition.

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JAZZ ALERT!

THE BLURT JAZZ DESK IS OPEN FOR BUSINESS! Announcing our newest department, which we hope will intrigue, enthuse, energize and - if we do our job correctly - even aggravate and prompt a back-and-forth dialogue. Go HERE for full details, along with direct links to exclusive content.Installment #1: Herbie Mann, reappraised.#2: New archival releases.#3: New releases.#4 Sonny Rollins interview.#5 MPS 180-gm vinyl reissues.